A passive optical network (PON) is one system for providing network access over “the last mile.” The PON is a point-to-multi-point (P2MP) network comprised of an optical line terminal (OLT) at the central office, an optical distribution network (ODN), and a plurality of optical network units (ONUs) at the customer premises. In some PON systems, such as Gigabit PON (GPON) systems, downstream data is broadcasted at about 2.5 Gigabits per second (Gbps) while upstream data is transmitted at about 1.25 Gbps. The bandwidth capabilities of the PON systems are expected to increase as the demands for services increase. To meet the increased demand in services, the OLT logic devices need to be reconfigured to transmit the data frames at a higher bandwidth, for example at about 10 Gbps. In addition, the ONU logic devices need to be reconfigured to process the received data at a higher bandwidth, which can be computationally expensive for some processes, such as forward error correction (FEC). One aspect that can affect the computation in FEC and the level of errors in communications is the configuration of the bandwidth map (BWmap).